NORTH PROVIDENCE –– After weeks of roller-coaster finances, Mayor Charles A. Lombardi said Wednesday that the town will be able to make its biweekly $2.5-million municipal payroll on Friday — thanks, in part, to better-than-anticipated tax collections.

“I’m assuming the publicity we have gotten concerning our financial plight has basically helped us,” Lombardi said. “I want to thank our taxpayers.”

The town was able to make its last payroll, on June 12, largely by tapping revenue generated by the Fire Department’s rescue service and by deferring payments to vendors. (Lombardi had said he planned to use more than $380,000 in federal stimulus money to cover that payday, but he learned only later that he had been quietly overruled by the town’s finance director and director of administration.)

Meeting the payroll this Friday does not mean an end to financial worries, Lombardi cautioned. Recent weeks of doubt have come amid the town’s anticipated $10-million budget deficit.

The next big payroll date: July 10, the first payday of the next fiscal year.

“It’s been a struggle. It’s consuming a lot of our time every day,” Lombardi said of meeting payrolls.

mmckinne@projo.com